Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to medical endoscopic examination devices, and in particular, to an endoscopic capsule and a method of using it in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.
Description of the Related Art
Capsule endoscopy is a way to record images of the digestive tract for use in medical examination and diagnosis. A typical capsule is a size and a shape of a large pill and contains a miniature camera. After a patient swallows the capsule, the camera takes pictures as it traverses the inside of the gastrointestinal tract of the patient. The primary use of the capsule endoscopy is to examine areas of the small intestine that cannot be seen by other types of endoscopy, such as colonoscopy or esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD).
This type of examination is often done to find sources of bleeding or abdominal pain. The procedure was approved by the U.S. FDA in 2001. Upper endoscopy (EGD) uses a camera attached to a long flexible tube to view the esophagus, the stomach and the beginning of the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum.
A colonoscope, once inserted through the rectum, can view the colon and the distal portion of the small intestine, the terminal ileum. However, these two types of endoscopy cannot visualize the majority of the middle portion of the gastrointestinal tract, the small intestine.
Therefore, capsule endoscopy is useful when disease is suspected in the small intestine and can sometimes diagnose sources of occult bleeding (blood visible microscopically only) or causes of abdominal pain, such as Crohn's disease or peptic ulcers. The capsule endoscopy can use Bluetooth to transfer the captured images.
However, the capsule can be retained in the stomach and/or intestinal tract for a relatively long period of time, as much as 6-12 hours, and waiting for the capsule to reach various areas of interest in the GI tract might require several hours of a physician's time. Also, review of the images requires a high degree of concentration by the physician, if performed in real time. After several hours of work, physician's attention decreases. This increases the possibility of omissions of certain images during the investigation analysis.
It should be noted that typical medical investigations are done because of symptoms experienced by a patient. The findings should be analyzed as soon as possible by the physician. Thus, the analysis should be performed within a short time to reserve time for medical procedures.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method for processing of endoscopic capsule images that assists the physician in identifying problem areas, such as polyps, cancerous areas, GI bleeding and the like. It is also desired to improve a usability of an endoscopic capsule in order to reduce examination time.